Showing posts with label The Buried Crown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Buried Crown. Show all posts

Wednesday 27 September 2023

Historic beasts and where to find them by Ally Sherrick

Since my first published children’s book, Black Powder, I have always included an heroic – and sometimes downright mischievous – animal sidekick in my stories. In Black Powder, about two children caught up in the Gunpowder Plot, my hero Tom has a white pet mouse called Jago. Since then I’ve included a dog, a raven, a monkey and a wolf in other stories. And I’ve created two new animal heroes in my current historical work in progress, though I’m not quite ready to reveal their identities yet!


An early favourite: Dippy the dinosaur in his original home at the Natural History Museum, London

My own earliest memorable brush with an historic beast was a visit to the Natural History Museum in London and a meeting with Dippy the Diplodocus, who in the past few years has been making a grand tour of the UK and thrilling visitors young and old wherever he – or she? – lands. Dippy, as I later discovered, is a composite of many rather than one individual dinosaur’s bones, and also a cast taken from the ‘original’ Dippy housed in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, USA. But whatever its origins, it still has the power to excite young imaginations, as it did for me.


Other actual remains of creatures from the past which have intrigued and wowed me in equal measure over the years include the mummified cats on display in the Egyptian galleries at the British Museum, a plaster-cast taken from the remains of a dog caught in the ash flow of the devastating eruption of Vesuvius at Pompeii complete with its collar, and the skeletons of eleven horses buried with their presumed royal owner in a Viking-age ship burial at Ladby in Denmark in the early tenth century.

Mummified cats in case at British Museum
Petrified dog from Pompeii excavations

Gallery with remains of Ladby Viking Ship

The Ladby Viking Ship which contained the remains of eleven dead horses


In addition to the remains of real live – or perhaps we should say ‘real dead’ – creatures that have come down to us from the past, the evidence of people’s passion for, and fear of animals throughout time is all around us, and across all cultures too.
For example, I love this mosaic of beasts fighting in the gladiatorial arena from a Roman villa in Cyprus. In fact, I used such scenes as part of my research into my Roman-set story Vita and the Gladiator in which my heroes, Vita and Brea are pitted against their own fierce animal combatants.



Photo: Catherine Randall

Medieval gargoyles on the outside of church towers and walls are also a favourite. I always look up before going inside to see if I can spot these strange, often nightmarish creatures created by medieval stonemasons, including this one of a devil or imp on St Peter’s Church in the Cotswolds town of Winchcombe. The word ‘gargoyle’ comes from the Old French word gargouille, meaning ‘throat’ and describes their practical function as waterspouts diverting rainwater from the roof. But historians believed they may also have served as charms to keep evil spirits away, or as a method of warning parishioners against committing sins.



Gargoyle of imp or devil on St. Peter's Church, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire

And of course real and fantastical animals are often included in tapestries, on coats of arms and in sculptures and paintings too. For example I was lucky enough a little while ago to see the exquisite Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.



This series of wall-hangings was woven in around 1500, probably in the South Netherlands, and is believed to have been a wedding gift destined to be hung in the happy couple’s bedchamber. The tapestries tell the story of the taming of the mythical unicorn – whose horn was believed to have magical properties to detect poison and purify water. But they also depict many recognisable real-life birds and animals including pheasants, ducks, rabbits and lions.

And on another holiday, this time to the city of Bangkok in Thailand, I visited the beautiful Buddhist temple of Wat Arun, home to many amazing sculptures including this one of the deity Indra on his three-headed elephant.



Meanwhile, the image of a monkey in a painting of Katherine of Aragon, the first wife of the Tudor King Henry VIII, helped inspire the creation of Pepin the monkey in my own story The Queen’s Fool. I knew that monkeys in those times were kept as pets by the nobility in grand houses in England and Europe. But they would have seemed strange to ordinary folk, especially my hero, Cat Sparrow, who has grown up in the enclosed world of a nunnery. When she first encounters him, she mistakes Pepin – or Pippo as she prefers to call him – for some kind of giant spider. Understandable if you’ve never seen a monkey before!



Animals also make a frequent appearance on items of jewellery, clothing and even armour throughout history. While studying medieval history at university I learned about the Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. I was fascinated to discover that many of the treasures buried with King Raedwald whose monument it’s believed to be, depicted creatures both real and imaginary. I’ve talked in another TimeTunnellers post about the Anglo-Saxons’ passion for dragons, the most striking examples of which are on the warrior’s helmet included in the burial. But there were also stunning depictions of wolves and eagles – two of the so-called ‘beasts of battle’ – on other items including the king’s purse and shield mounts.



The Sutton Hoo helmet with a pair of decorative dragons - spot a set of wings over the eyebrows

And from a completely different culture - South America this time - this beautiful gold frog pendant. It was made somewhere between the 8th and 16th centuries and may have been a totem, a sacred object representative of a spirit being with supernatural powers.



But perhaps my favourite representations of animals and birds in the past are in the illuminated manuscripts produced by monks in the scriptoria, or writing rooms, of medieval monasteries. The illustrations included in the copies of holy texts they made – including the beautiful early 15th century Sherborne Missal now in the British Library – were often both a celebration of the natural world and a very human testament to their vivid imaginations and colourful sense of humour. A form of escape perhaps from the bleak conditions they were working in sat at their desks in those cold and draughty monastery buildings.



I love the little snail perched on the gloved hand of the hare in this illumination

Best of all, are the illuminated texts known as bestiaries. A bestiary was a compendium of beasts, with illustrations of animals and an accompanying description of their natural history and which usually included a moral message for the reader – mainly monks and clerics – drawn from the beast’s assigned religious meaning. They were first produced by ancient Greek scholars, but versions of them became increasingly popular during the Middle Ages, especially in England and France.



Pages from the Aberdeen Bestiary - created in England circa 1200

Bestiaries included both beasts that existed – for example pelicans, lions, bears and wild boars – and ones – spoiler alert! – such as griffins, unicorns, dragons and basilisks that didn’t. But no distinction about whether they were real or imagined was made in the entry.



A Pelican feeding her young with her own blood. The bird is real but the behaviour is not

There’s some debate among academics today about whether medieval people really believed the more fantastical ones actually existed or else accepted that they had been created for teaching purposes. But either way, many of these amazing beasts have found their way into fantasy stories and films of more modern times including works like Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and J.K. Rowlings’ Harry Potter series and its spin-offs to name but a few.

Writing Challenge

Pick your own favourite real-life animal and taking inspiration from imaginary creatures in the past, with a wave of your pen transform it into a fantastical creature to include in your own 21st century bestiary. What sort of additional physical features will you give it to make it suitably weird and wonderful? Where does it live? What does it eat and drink? What sort of noise does it make when it’s happy, or angry? What special powers might it have? Write a few paragraphs describing it. And don’t forget to include a drawing of it too!


 

Ally Sherrick is the award-winning author of stories full of history, mystery and adventure.

BLACK POWDER, her debut novel about a boy caught up in the Gunpowder Plot, won the Historical Association’s Young Quills Award. Other titles include THE BURIED CROWN, a wartime tale with a whiff of Anglo-Saxon myth and magic and THE QUEEN’S FOOL, a story of treachery and treason set at the court of King Henry VIII. Ally’s latest book with Chicken House Books, is VITA AND THE GLADIATOR, the story of a young girl’s fight for justice in the high-stakes world of London’s gladiatorial arena.

For more information about Ally and her books visit www.allysherrick.com You can also follow her on Twitter @ally_sherrick



Thursday 13 January 2022

Here be dragons! - by Ally Sherrick

I do like a good dragon! The fearsome, treasure-loving Smaug in The Hobbit has got to be one of the best ever. His creator, the celebrated writer and Oxford Professor of Anglo-Saxon, J.R.R. Tolkien modelled him on the vengeful, treasure-hoarding dragon in the epic Old English poem, Beowulf which the legendary monster-slayer and hero must face in the final, epic battle of his life.

The fire-breathing Smaug from ‘The Hobbit’ by J.R.R Tokien,
in an illustration by the author. Can you spot Tolkien’s hobbit hero,
Bilbo Baggins bravely doffing his cap to him?
(Authors own photo of postcard)

My own wartime adventure, The Buried Crown has a dragon or two in it too. The book tells the story of two brave children – London evacuee, George Penny and German Jewish refugee, Kitty Regenbogen – who get caught up in a desperate race against time to find and rescue a priceless piece of Anglo-Saxon treasure before a bunch of Nazi treasure-thieves can get their hands on it in a bid to change the course of the war.

 

It was inspired by the discovery of the now famous Anglo-Saxon Sutton Hoo Ship Burial treasure in the summer of 1939, a few weeks before the outbreak of war. Excavating at a site just outside the town of Woodbridge in Suffolk, archaeologists unearthed the remains of what turned out to be an early 7th century long-ship buried deep beneath the largest of a series of ancient burial mounds belonging to local woman, Edith Pretty.  

The archaeological excavation of the largest burial mound at Sutton Hoo
revealed the impression of a ghostly ship the length
of two double-decker buses
(Author’s own photo of postcard)

Though the timbers of the ship itself had rotted way to leave nothing but a ghostly imprint and lines of rusty rivets in the soil, a wooden shelter inside contained goods which ranged from humble domestic objects such as cups, bowls and spoons, to weaponry and gorgeous items of treasure including a purse filled with gold coins, a great golden belt buckle and a magnificent helmet. At the time it was described as the British equivalent of the celebrated Tutankhamun discovery and remains one of the richest archaeological finds in Northern Europe.

Following decades of research by archaeologists and historians, the most widely-held belief today is that the ship was the burial site of the pagan ruler, Redwald, King of the East Angles and High King of Britain and that the goods it contained were intended for use by the king in the afterlife.

One of the many fascinating things about the treasure is the appearance on some of the most precious items, including the famous Sutton Hoo helmet, shield and sword-belt, of dragons. These are very stylised and not at all like the modern idea of dragons as depicted in the movie version of The Hobbit and HBO’s Game of Thrones. But, if you know how to look, they will reveal themselves to you, emerging as creatures with red garnet eyes, beak-like faces and wings either tucked along the length of their body or spread wide, as in the case of the helmet, to form the eyebrows of its awe-inspiring, mask-like face. They are also a part of the celebrated animal interlacing – a trademark feature of much Anglo-Saxon art – and of which the priceless Sutton Hoo belt buckle is a stunning example.

 

Shield boss – Replica of the boss from the king’s shield ringed
by a circle of ‘beaked’ dragons heads with red garnet eyes
(Author’s own photo)

Gold and garnet dragon - This highly stylised dragon is one of the shield
mounts and features a fearsome set of spiked jaw, a red garnet eye
and a line of ‘winglets’ fringing both sides of its body.
(Author’s own photo)

Replica of the famous Sutton Hoo helmet -
Can you spot the dragons?
(Author’s own photo)

The Anglo-Saxons loved – or perhaps I should say lived in dread – of dragons. They believed there were two types. ‘Drakes’, who breathed fire and could fly like Tolkein’s Smaug, and wingless ‘wyrms’ who slithered across the landscape like giant reptiles. The creatures lived inside burial mounds like the ones King Redwald’s ship was discovered beneath at Sutton Hoo, and guarded the treasure buried inside them, exacting the most dreadful revenge on anyone who dared try and steal it away from them.

 

Beware a burial mound like this one at Sutton Hoo – it might be the home of a dragon!
(Photo used by kind permission of The National Trust)

This idea of an ancient and angry treasure-guardian, so powerfully depicted in the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf, provided the inspiration for my own ‘story within a story’ in The Buried Crown. Known as The Legend of the Dragon-Headed Crown, it became the ‘foundation myth’ for the magic which leaks into the world of my heroes, George and Kitty as the story progresses.

And the dragons depicted on the treasures at Sutton Hoo – perhaps as protection against thieves? –  gave rise to my own piece of dragon treasure which – spoiler alert! – might just have special powers of its own.

You can visit the real-life treasures found at Sutton Hoo in the Early British Medieval Galleries at the British Museum in London. Or if you can’t make it there in person, check them out on the excellent museum website. And if want to visit the site of the excavations at Sutton Hoo, view the burial mound field and see more exhibits on the treasures and the life and times of the Anglo-Saxons who made and buried them there, why not take a trip to Sutton Hoo itself, now in the property of the National Trust.

Writing prompt

Take a look at dragons in other cultures – either writings or images; historical or modern. How might their depiction inspire you to create a dragon of your own? What might you borrow and what would you discard? What is their purpose, their power, their name? Happy dragon-hunting! 

Ally Sherrick is the author of books full of history, mystery and adventure including Black Powder, winner of the Historical Association’s Young Quills Award 2017, The Buried Crown and Tudor-Set adventure, The Queen’s Fool. She is published by Chicken House Books and her books are widely available in bookshops and online. You can find out more about her and her books at www.allysherrick.com and follow her on Twitter: @ally_sherrick

 

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